Hey everyone, I'm Joel on the Road. And today, my UNESCO World Heritage Journey is at Saltaire,
in northern England.
Saltaire is a textile mill and a planned community on the outskirts of the city of Bradford in
northern England. And it was built in the 1850s by a local man, a wealthy entrepreneur named
Sir Titus Salt. He wanted to combine his five existing textile mills into one enormous mill,
which he did and you can see that in the building behind me. But as a pious man, he was horrified
by the conditions that his workers had to endure in the city of Bradford. It was absolute
filth and squalor, and outbreaks of dysentery and cholera were very common, killing hundreds
of people. And so he realised that his workers would be much more productive and loyal if
they had stable homes and good health, so he built them a planned community with everything
that you would expect from a modern lifestyle. Let's go and have a look around.
This is the church here in Saltaire, and it was one of the first buildings constructed
in the model village. As a very pious and religious man, Sir Titus hoped to instil the
same values and disciplines in his workers. And quite interestingly, this is where the
family mausoleum is as well.
Now they may not look like much to our modern eyes, but these were the "McMansions" of their
day. Sir Titus constructed 800 of these houses in his model village of Saltaire, and they're
known as the "two-up, two-down" style: two bedrooms upstairs, one for mum and dad, another
for the kids, and two rooms downstairs: a living room, and a kitchen / dining room,
a toilet outside and a small backyard for exercise. But most importantly of all: proper sewerage.
Now in addition to the church and all the houses, Sir Titus also built many community
facilities like Victoria Hall, that you can see behind me. This was a community building
that had a concert hall, a library, and several other facilities too. He also built a school,
and a hospital.
Now there was one building that Sir Titus did *not* build, and that, of course, was
a pub. As a former minister and very pious man, he'd seen first-hand the evils that drink
could do to his workforce, and so he forbade any pubs from being built in his village.
It's been a really interesting spot here, I didn't have that high expectations but it's
fantastic to see all this Victorian architecture in the one place, and it's great to see that
19th century industrialists weren't all Ebenezer Scrooge. Some of them were genuinely concerned
about the welfare of their employees. But that's it from me, thank you very much for
watching. I'm Joel on the Road, and I'll see you at the next World Heritage Site!